Biden’s trip to the Middle East was a fiasco but the Israel lobby loved it. Former ambassadors Dan Shapiro and Martin Indyk celebrate the trip as a breakthrough and manage not to mention Israel’s killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during an hour’s talk. While an AIPAC officials says of the speech Biden gave when he arrived, “you would have been hard pressed to write a better speech, for the things we believe in.”
Why is Biden is telling Israeli leaders that the relationship with the U.S. is “bone-deep”? To please the Israel lobby back home, which has flexed its muscles in Michigan and Maryland, pouring millions into two Democratic primaries. Biden doesn’t want to alienate those donors. Even if Democratic voters don’t care. Ads in those primaries don’t even mention Israel!
Polling by Huwaida Arraf, a Democratic House candidate in Michigan, shows that her position of cutting off aid to Israel is not unpopular. “Palestine is a political positive…Attitudes toward military aid to Israel undermine claims by AIPAC that strong support for Israel is ‘good politics… [S]ix in ten (60%) voters under 45 want aid to Israel reduced or ended,” a memo to donors asserts.
Pressure mounts on Joe Biden to stand up for Shireen Abu Akleh 6 weeks after Israeli forces killed the Palestinian-American journalist. A letter from 24 senators demands that the FBI and State Department undertake an investigation of the killing and rejects Israeli claims that it can do so. Six weeks have passed and there has been “no significant progress” toward establishing a transparent investigation. The “only way” for there to be a “credible” investigation is for the U.S. to undertake it, the senators say. AIPAC, Israel’s U.S. mouthpiece, urged senators not to sign the letter.
The battle between J Street and AIPAC to influence the Democratic Party is also opening space for Palestine solidarity to enter the mainstream.
A new Super PAC has reared its head and it’s made no secret of its first target: Rashida Tlaib. It comes as no surprise that Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American woman and the only Palestinian Democrat ever in Congress, is coming under severe attack ahead of her primary two months from now. But the nature of that attack is a particularly dangerous and pernicious one, and its nature is one that constitutes a unique and serious threat to not only advocates of Palestinian rights and freedom, but to progressives across the board.
Rep. Henry Cuellar has declared victory in Texas’s 28th congressional district despite the fact that the runoff was too close to call on Wednesday morning. AIPAC spent nearly $2 million on the anti-choice, NRA-backed Democrat in Texas’s 28th district. It looks like it narrowly paid off.
Nearly 60 House Democrats have signed onto a letter, sent to the State Department and FBI, calling for an independent investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The letter is led by Reps. Andre Carson (D-IN) and Lou Correa (D-CA).
AIPAC’s tactics are receiving increasing attention within the mainstream.
Two Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania this week were particularly instructive for advocates of Palestinian freedom and rights but carried very different lessons.